Quote Originally Posted by Carighan View Post
Ah I sometimes like it because it avoids more damage than most mitigation skills and it aborts all the spam AoE casts by trash mobs. But you're right of course in that it's only worth it for variety, both tank mitigation and healer oGCD output is too strong versus the incoming damage to truly care. That however is something that ought to be fixed regardless, independent of anything with Shield Bash.

I do think the skill would have more potential if it worked as a raise shield -> bash with shield 2 step move maybe, and was our form of active blocking not a 90s CD 10s duration selfbuff. Active blocking as a concept would be cool, regardless. But quite utopian.
I don't think it does. If we first compare it to Low Blow, it is only 1 second extra of a stun, you aren't going to notice that unless you go in-depth, but that also pales in comparison to the best way to avoid damage, which is to kill the thing first. Shield Bash has lower potency (100) than Total Eclipse (120), which means more time in combat with an enemy. Just to make a simple comparison, 3 Shield Bash is 300 potency over 3 GCDs, Total Eclipse > Prominence > Holy Circle is 590, almost twice the potency, which means, you can save 3 GCDs worth of damage, this is before we take into account Fight or Flight, Imperator and the blade combo, which will just massively cut the time engaged down massively. Even Blade of Faith, the weakest blade at 760 potency, gains over 6 GCDs worth of damage mitigation over Shield Bash and we haven't looked at single target yet either.

Even if we look at stunning 2 or more targets quickly, the enemies need to be using something threatening for you to need to stun them all and have things like Holy Sheltron, Rampart or Guardian cannot cover it, but, at that point, Hallowed Ground would be better. Whilst I do not have extensive knowledge on deep dungeons, I feel situations like that would be deliberately avoided and would come from a mistake, which would make them rare, so the cooldown on Hallowed Ground wouldn't even be an issue. Feel free to correct if wrong.

Shield Bash has so much against it that it just doesn't seem to have any redeeming qualities where something else couldn't do the job it was intended to do.